Gen Zs like me can’t get into the housing market, so don’t judge us on our $15 cronuts

You’ve seen them: the long, snaking queues of people outside a door in the city, ready to drop a small fortune on the hottest commodity in town. And no, I’m not talking about gold. For many young consumers, “little treats” – bespoke coffees, viral pastries, and the latest frozen dairy trend – are a much more common investment.

It’s funny. A few years ago, Millennials were admonished for their smashed avocado toast obsession, as though they could save for a deposit on a house by forfeiting just a few weekends of brunch. Now, we barely bat an eye at a $15 cronut, or the young, home-buying-age adults who line up for them.

Not that I’m trying to rationalise my spending habits here. I work part-time and pay nearly $400 a week in rent, but I get a take-away cappuccino most days, eat out a couple of nights a week and buy almond croissants like I’m trying to single-handedly keep the butter industry alive.

The rising cost of living has warped my concept of instant versus delayed gratification. Sydney’s median house price rose by $104,130 in the year to September. Assuming the average fancy coffee/gelato/pastry costs about $10, that’s about 28 treats a day between me and keeping pace with the housing market. Forgive me for thinking I’ve got bigger barriers to homeownership than splurging on an iced yuzu long black.

The cultural ascendancy of the little treat is as much a cultural shift as it is an economic one. Generations past saved such delicacies for holidays – a croissant at a curbside cafe on the trip-of-a-lifetime to Paris, or an ice-cream after dinner on a summer beach getaway. A tedious afternoon is enough for me to justify a pistachio scroll. As the range of treats many people can afford shrinks in size, the concept of an occasion worth celebrating has grown to fill the void.

And you get bang for your buck because buying a little treat increasingly feels like purchasing a luxury item. Bakeries display their buttery wares on sleek shelves that have more in common with a fashion-show runway than the noisy refrigerated cabinets of yesteryear. Stanmore’s Pantry Story earlier this year released a limited edition, edible croissant handbag.

At Melbourne-born pastry wunderkind Lune, which describes itself as an “institution solely dedicated to the creation of croissants”, said creations are packed into ventilated takeaway boxes that wouldn’t look out of place in the Apple Store.

It’s all terribly Instagrammable. Each time I open the app I’m served an updated grid of fried, frozen and frosted delights, usually posted by an influencer cooing that they’ve found “Sydney’s newest hidden gem”. Miso butter this, biscoff caramel that. Collagen-enriched matcha on tap.

While the flashy cafes get a lot of social media coverage, so too do the CBD holes-in-the-wall and bakeries buried deep in suburbia. While sweet-treat culture has conspicuously replaced bigger-ticket purchases, it has increasingly become a substitute for bygone forms of social interaction.

In a new TikTok trend, users post videos of themselves holding snacks ranging from sushi handrolls to iced matchas in the manner a Parisienne might hold a cigarette. Soft jazz plays in the background and the captions read “a little something to take the edge off”.

It’s a homage to a pastime that (thankfully) for many people no longer exists, but has left a void nonetheless. Most of Gen Z has never been on a smoke break, and fewer of us are turning up to after-work drinks (if we’re even in the office). But a morning coffee run, a WFH lunch from the local cafe, or a 3pm cookie in the sun with colleagues? Count us in!

Sure, you can go for a walk around the block, or make a cup of tea in the office kitchen. But where’s the fun in that? We want to be a little frivolous. We seek the rush of stupid purchases. And if someone dares question your financial habits, you can charge them with failing to understand the generational cost-of-living crisis. Let us eat brioche! It’s about all we can afford.

Grace Lagan is a Sydney-based law student.